Mortification by Numbers

'Go to this website,' said my friend Professor Abacus, 'it's run by the UN, and you can calculate your carbon footprint and buy offsets'. So I did, dutifully entering all sorts of data about my energy consumption and lifestyle. To my horror, my individual output of greenhouse gases is nearly twice that of the Professor's household of three people, and four times the UK average. This is despite being able to walk to work, struggling to the supermarket and back on foot or bike up a number of steep hills and going out on the train to avoid using the car, not flying, switching my energy to a green supplier, and so on. I might as well have a fracking plant in the back garden. I am presuming that because I have a monstrously big house, the UN assumes I will be heating it to the sweltering UK average during the winter months, rather than sitting shivering in a cassock in my study, which is what actually happens. 

I'm not completely sold on the business of offsetting, either, though it's better than nothing. Some of the projects the UN's offsetting scheme supports actually concluded some years ago, which makes the whole process a bit abstract and strange. I can just about get my head round the idea that prayer might work retrospectively, God being outside time, but I'm not sure the same is true of bank transfers.

Anyway, even though the online calculators may be highly dubious in detail, it emphasises how limited the role of consumers is. I won't be saving human society any time soon. And they didn't even ask how nice I'm being to the bees.